1. Mentoring.
Mentoring involves guiding people through a particular transition process by someone who has been through the same process before and can provide support through their own experience. Mentoring should be a longer-term commitment to be effective, because for mentees it is primarily about reflecting on desires and goals, recognizing the spaces have to maneuver in and being strengthened through a mentor's accompaniment.
1.1 Basics
In a mentorship, you convey your expertise and the story of your personal career path on the one hand, but at the same time it is important to be able to abstract from this what seems relevant and appropriate for your mentee with regard to their individual personality.
Question the mentee's goals critically for achievability, but also remain open to their wishes and ideas. Offer your opinion on how to handle a situation as one option and leave the decision up to the mentee.
In addition to your knowledge and personal experience, it is quite essential for mentees to experience encouragement, motivation and strengthening of their own initiative through you. Encourage mentees to try out things, not to wait for opportunities to arise on their own, but to be proactive and create opportunities for themselves. Help with decisions, but leave the responsibility of choice up to the mentee.
1.2 Boundaries of Mentoring
Mentoring / Coaching / Counselling
Mentoring is not counselling in which experts impart knowledge, but offers personal experience values as guidelines for one's own actions. Mentoring is also not coaching, in which experts develop processes, but offers the opportunity to develop one's own process through reflection and exchange with more experienced people.
However, the boundaries between mentoring, consulting and coaching are often fluid. So, if you have experience in coaching and/or consulting, you may of course incorporate this into a mentorship, but you should always keep your own boundaries in mind: You are volunteering as a mentor and should not start to develop a feeling that you are performing work that in another context you would be getting paid for.
Entrepreneurship-mentoring
Particularily in the area of mentoring people for self-employment, entrepreneurship and/or business start-ups, mentees sometimes have the expectation to get support that resembles more something like business counselling then what mentorship fundamentally is. These may be questions about the viability of start-up ideas or tax concerns. In these cases, guide your mentee to research information themselves. Mentees will find contacts to a variety of institutions that offer advice, training and funding for founders on the alma platform.
Further boundaries in a mentorship
- Keep in mind that you are not taking on a "career guarantee" . It is not the task of mentors to provide mentees with a job or job contacts.
- Do not provide academic support for mentees who are in the final stages of their studies. Students have University-supervisors for this purpose.
- Do not provide therapeutic "life counseling". This does not mean that personal matters should not have a place in your mentorship, but always try to remain aware of your role and set your boundaries if necessary.
Please also keep in mind that the desire to support mentees beyond the agreed-upon, professional issues does not necessarily arise at the mentee's request. You are in a supportive role and will develop a personal relationship with your mentee over a period of time, so you may not yourself immediately perceive that boundaries are being overstepped, as you might experience a strong willingness to help. However, you always have the opportunity to steer the mentorship relationship back on track as agreed upon, even if boundaries were not so clear in a previous meeting. Please also note that you can always contact the alma mentoring team should any problems arise.
4. Common topics in mentoring
4.1 Career orientation and career entry
- Learn about career orientation/career fields and own interests
- Learn to assess own skills
- Get insight into specific career paths
- Better understand job-application processes
- Make professional contacts, establish or expand a professional network
- Develop a concrete career goal
- Reconciling family-life and specific career fields
- Labor law issues (i.g. work-contracts)
- Salary negotiation, salary level
4.2 Self-employment and start-up
- Work-life balance in self-employment
- Stress management strategies
- Career networks for self-employed professionals
- Gaps between expectations for self-employment and reality
- Stages in the process towards self-employment
4.3 Working abroad
- Job hunting abroad
- Housing abroad
- Labor law differences
- Cultural differences
- Adequate pay
- Insurance plans
- Building professional or social networks
5. Support
Please do not hesitate to contact the alma mentoring team should any difficulties, unpleasant situations or questions to be clarified arise during the mentoring process. We will try to be available and support you to the best of our abilities at all times and will not get involved in any way that has not been agreed with you beforehand.
You will also receive peer support online: in our forum and groups, you can exchange ideas with other mentors should questions or problems arise in your mentorship.
Your contact to the alma mentoring team:
Email: alma@univie.ac.at
Phone: 0043-1-4277-28007